Jeju Traditional Culture Tour

Ryan and I went on the Jeju Traditional Culture Tour that Michelle signed us up for. It was a completely free bus tour, put on by Jeju City for foreigners living in the city. It was an all day tour where took us to three different touristy places. There was one bus full of English speaking foreigners, consisting of a few American and Canadian teachers and a few families from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. And another bus full of Chinese students. Ryan and I made friends with a couple of grad students from Pakistan and hung out with them most of the time.

This is our tour guide, Sunni. Right now she's telling us the story of the famous Jeju Women Divers, the Haenyo. Her step-aunt is one!



This is Ryan and I with our new Pakistani friends at Ilchulland park



Here's Ryan grinding some millet.



Here's the a family from Bangladesh posing with the stone grandpas. These grandfather stone statues are literally everywhere throughout the island.



Here's another family posing in front of the trees. Ilchulland was pretty, but mostly just a tourist trap.



Inside of Ilchulland was Micheon Caves. The cave is a lava-tube and is something like 1.5km long. The public is allowed to go 360m or so in before being stopped by the red tape. Throughout there were these huge manmade pillars in the cave. Sunni said that they are there to provide stability to the cave. I hope it doesn't collapse! I have to admit that I did like the painting of the dragon on this one. This is Ryan and I posing with our tour guides.



Ryan and I both agreed that Ilchulland was the low point of the tour, but the ostriches made it worth the visit!



The next stop is a Jeju Traditional Folk Village. The first thing we did at the village was to make these things called "bing dduk." The dough is pretty much the same as a crepe, but you use sesame seed oil on the pan.



You then fill the crepe with a radish/green onion mix for a half decent though quite plain tasting treat.



I just thought I'd throw in this picture of some pigs. Jeju, apparently, is quite famous for its "black pork." I think I've had it though I'm not sure. Whatever I did have that day was really good though. I also like their little house.



After making the food, we had to work in the farm. Literally. Here we are digging for sweet potatoes.

After making the food, we learned how to make rope out of grass. They use these ropes to tie down the tops of their houses. I thought this was really cool. You hook this spinning contraption to the grass and while it twists, all these guys do is feed the grass into it.



Here's me walking away from the guy feeding grass into the rope. You eventually have two ends and then twist those two together. Voila, a rope in 30 seconds!



After we made the ropes, we played a little jump rope.



Then after jumping rope, we sat down and sang a few traditional songs and played some games.



After the folk village, we went to the stone grandfather park. This was a pretty nice park since it looked a little more natural and closer to what Jeju actually looks like. This was one of the more interesting sculptures.



This guy was pretty cute. The grandpa stones you see around Jeju City actually don't look like these guys. Apparently there's different statues for different areas of the island.